This study explores the development of a new form of social commerce in emerging markets from three interlocking aspects, namely, social (trust and familiarity), technical (governing form factor and technological utility), and socio-technical (perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and word of mouth). As social commerce is proliferating and evolving across many emerging markets, we explore how these above-stated constructs manifest themselves in these markets. Our findings show the importance of governing form factors such as mobile system in the development of social commerce in emerging markets. Furthermore, familiarity and trust play a major role in mediating exchange between sellers and buyers and its positive effective in buyers’ perceived usefulness of each social commerce platform. Finally, Word of Mouth plays a vital role in building trust and helps in increasing buyer propensity and intention to search for products on these social commerce platforms.

INTRODUCTION

One of the major factors enabling the survival and prosperity of the human race is its ability to organize its members into self-governing groups that dictate the means and methods by which trade in goods and services is conducted, principles by which regulations are formulated, and processes through which each transaction is governed, mediated and executed. The fundamental demand for the trade of commodities and services gave birth to a plethora of methods and means for mutual trading from the barter system of the early Stone Age to the interconnected world of the e-commerce and social commerce era we live in today. The introduction of the web-enabled commercial entities to expand their reach and access new markets not previously accessible (Laudon and Traver 2016). This new arena ushered the development of e-commerce that laid the foundation for the exchange of goods and services. Concomitantly, the Internet evolved from static to interactive and reusable pages, allowing, even more, flexibility and intractability, which in turn led to the advancement of Web 2.0 that empowered users with tools to assist them in content creation, distribution, and consumption. This, in due course, laid the foundation of the prosumer era that is now revolutionizing the Internet as it stands today. The introduction of e-commerce (Becker 2007; Wigand, 1997) is not novice to this time of information age. Furthermore, the reach of sociability based on trust (Ba and Pavlou 2002; Corbitt et al. 2003; Gefen 2000; Lee 2016) and familiarity (Gefen 2000) within e-commerce varies across systems and platforms, respectively. Various studies explored the developmental stages of e-commerce and social commerce, Bakos (1998) explored the emerging role of e-commerce on the Internet, by introducing the functions of these electronic marketplaces, including brokerage between buyers and sellers, facilitation of transaction, and institutional infrastructure. Bakos (1997) also explored the reduction of search cost for consumers and its implications on electronic marketplaces. As for market structure, Yoo et al. (2001) introduced a bifurcation of these electronic marketplaces as either natural or biased and assessed both regarding their respective strength and weakness in creating successful marketplaces. With interconnected social and semantic webs, users have witnessed the evolution of distinct methods of trading goods and services that deviate from the traditional norms of e-commerce.